Justice Scalia Fears America's Best Law Schools Are Turning Out 'Ignorant' Attorneys

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia sharply criticized law
school at, of all places, his recent
commencement speech at William & Mary Law School.

Scalia said prestigious law
schools around the country are not adequately preparing law
students because they're letting them take questionable electives
in place of more important traditional courses. He attacked
schools that let their second- and third-year law students “study
whatever strikes his or her fancy — so long as there is a
professor who has the same fancy.”

He complained that some of
those electives “have a distinct non-legal flavor,” such as a
Harvard course called “The Philosophical Reinvention of
Christianity,” and the University of Chicago’s “Contemporary
Virtue Ethics.”

“This elimination of a core
curriculum, and the accompanying proliferation of narrow (not to
say silly) elective courses has not come without its costs,” he
said.

He singled out the University
of Chicago Law School, asserting that it's possible to graduate
from that school without ever studying the First
Amendment.

"Can someone really call
himself an American lawyer who has that gap in his compendious
knowledge of the law?" he said. "And can a society that depends
so much upon lawyers for shaping public perceptions and
preserving American traditions regarding the freedom of speech
and religion, afford so ignorant a bar?”

This is not the first time Scalia has criticized law school
education or law school electives. At the University of New
Hampshire Law School in 2013, he told students to "take
the bread and butter" classes.

"Do not take, ‘law and women,’ do not take ‘law and poverty,’ do
not take ‘law and anything."